For the uninitiated, Carter Stanley was an expressive singer and songwriter.  As the front man for the legendary Stanley Brothers duo, he spent the best 20 years of his life pounding the pavement to take his gift to anyone who would listen.  By 1966, he was tired.  But… he had a story to tell!

Raised in the coalfields of Appalachia during the hardscrabble days of the Great Depression, the bright lights of a country stage raised the hairs on the back of a 10-year-old’s neck!  He had found his calling!  A decade later, his musical expression of choice was a new phenomenon known to many as the high lonesome sound… what would come to be known the world over as bluegrass.  Tormented by a parent’s adolescent rejection… frustrated by the lack of commercial success — still he held to his dream.  He played the music, he wrote the songs, and ultimately… he self-destructed.  A Life of Sorrow is the story of one man’s musical journey.  From the Clinch Mountains of Virginia, around the world, and back home again.